couple from my dad—all just random BS and nothing important—and a deluge from Dean through Promethean. The boy had been blowing up my phone all night and I’d missed it! He probably thought I hated him.
I fired off replies to my parents first, then locked myself in a stall so I could read Dean’s messages. They weren’t what I was expecting. They were so real. And still so very Dean. He’d sent the last one less than a minute earlier, so I typed out a response as quickly as I could, hoping he hadn’t put his phone away yet.
DreOfTheDead: of course we’re friends
DreOfTheDead: dumbass
DreOfTheDead: whatre you doing
DreOfTheDead: can you go to video???
Dean didn’t answer. Of course I’d just missed his messages. Welcome to my life. I should’ve gone out to find Mel, but I read Dean’s messages over and over, mining the words for every ounce of meaning. Everything about Dean was so different from me. The words he used, the way he formed his sentences, the creepy corpse metaphor. I never would’ve used a word like “ennui.” Mel would’ve called me out for a shit if I had, though Dad would’ve tried to high-five me for using a good SAT word. But for all our differences, I’d never related to something harder than I did to the feelings Dean had described. The isolation. There I was at the con, surrounded by people who were supposedly like me—nerdy like me, outsider like me, freak like me—and I had never felt more lonely. People either ignored me completely or accosted me with questions, treating me like an object rather than a person. Sometimes it felt like even Mel didn’t understand me anymore. She always said she’d be there to catch me if I fell, but she was the one who’d grown wings while I was still stuck on the ground.
Then there was Dean, pouring out his soul, and all I wanted right then was to talk to him, but I’d missed my chance. “Damn it!”
My phone buzzed as a Promethean notification popped up asking if I wanted to video-chat with PrezMamasBoy, and I hit that accept button so damn fast.
“Dre? Dre, it’s Dean. I can’t see you.”
Dean sounded like he was in the stall with me, and his face filled the screen. “Shit!” My finger was covering the front camera. I shifted my hold on the phone and held it higher. “Dean!”
“Dre!” Dean’s expression reminded me of the way my gramps looked when he tried to video-chat with me, even though he didn’t really know what he was doing. “What’s wrong with your face?”
“What’s wrong with your face?” I snapped back.
Dean shook his head and pointed at the screen. “You’re gray. Is that makeup? Are you doing a photo shoot?”
Oh yeah. I’d forgotten what I looked like. “I’m at a con.” I remembered I was talking to the guy who said “photo shoot” and who introduced himself at the beginning of every text chain, and added, “A comic book convention. There was a cosplay contest. I didn’t win, but it’s okay. What’re you doing?” I peered at the screen. “Are you in the bathroom? Did you call me while you were taking a dump?”
Dean’s face went fifty shades of red as he stuttered and stumbled to come up with an answer. “I am in a restroom. Public. In a toilet stall, actually. But I am most definitely not ‘taking a dump.’ I swear. I did come in here to use the facilities, but then I sent you a message, and you responded, and I was trying to figure out how to request a video chat and accidentally initiated one.”
Watching the boy have a mini meltdown was adorable. “If you’re not using the toilet, what are you . . . Are you hiding in there?”
Dean cleared his throat. “Yes. I’m hiding in the toilet.”
I turned my phone and flashed it around the stall. “Me too.”
Dean laughed. A full-throated, no-bullshit laugh that sounded like a hyena gargling hot sand, and it was glorious. I’d seen him laugh in clips that I’d found online, and it looked and sounded nothing like this. This was so unguarded and pure.
“You got a nice laugh,” I said.
“No, I don’t.”
I shook my head. “No, you don’t. It’s pretty ridiculous, but I like it anyway.”
It was weird seeing him. Talking to him this way instead of sending messages back and forth, where we could compose the best versions of ourselves. Like Dean’s laugh, it was awful, but I liked